The gallery helping neurodivergent artists bridge gaps in the art world

The gallery helping neurodivergent artists bridge gaps in the art world Maya Tamang says she "ain't no fancy bird", but you wouldn't know if you met her. At Melbourne CBD gallery Jump Left, which is hosting her first solo show, she is resplendent in a frilly pink dress, dinner jacket with zebra print detailing, a pink pompom scarf and a bedazzled pink headdress. "My way of communicating at social events is through outrageous fashion and glamour because you kind of can skip small talk," she says. Tamang has autism, which can make the highly social art world especially difficult to navigate. "I ain't no fancy bird" is the name of her show, a celebration of all things glitz, glamour and camp. In one portrait on display, comedian and cabaret performer Reuben Kaye poses in an outrageous hat shaped like a pair of lips with "Hollywood" scrawled across in gold. The world Tamang paints harks back to a more elaborate past, one she became fascinated with as a child. References to old Hollywood films, Elizabeth Taylor and Liberace find their way onto her canvases, as well as custom-decorated boots and headwear. "Ever since I was a young girl, I was quite close with my grandma," she says. "She lived in a home that looked like it was from a different time, and she loved all those films too. "They felt so distant and other-worldly to me that I almost wanted to be in those films." Kaye, who took over as artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival this year, is exactly the kind of larger-than-life figure Tamang is drawn to. He sat for the portraits over several sessions. "Sitting for anything is an odd experience," Kaye says. "I'm a doing person, and being the subject for a painting is in many ways a passive role. But sitting for Maya was joyous and chaotic." A number of portraits hanging throughout the gallery space show Kaye adorned in garish costumes. "Maya has a unique, messy, chaotic eye that throws finesse and refinement out the window in favour of chaos, and almost a primal, messy expression of queerness that owes more to punk than some might expect," Kaye says. Tamang came to art as a teenager, not through school — which she never finished — but through art therapy sessions subsidised by the NDIS. Painting gave her a way to express things that were hard to put into words. "Separating myself from what's going on around me and putting my head down and working is my escape," she says. A few years ago, a solo show in a CBD gallery would have seemed impossible. Tamang was in and out of the psychiatric unit at Broadmeadows hospital, in the city's north. "I felt really stuck for a long time," she says. Tamang, whose father is Nepalese, didn't always feel like she fit in. "Growing up, [I felt] a bit of shame and stigma about my background," she says. "I just really wanted to do everything I could to just fit in and not be bullied and survive. "But being an adult, coming back with fresh eyes, I'm proud of it." 'Artist's vision' central to gallery's approach Art helped Tamang make it out of those tough times, but turning it into a career is the harder next step. Every artist has to deal with the business around the work: the funding applications, the correspondence with galleries, the framing, the installation. Tamang says for a neurodivergent artist, that side of things can be the most difficult part, and the point where a career can stall. Jump Left, which started in 2024, exists to help artists through exactly this. Tamang found her way to the gallery, which works with artists who are neurodivergent or living with disability, less than a year ago through a mutual friend she met at an exhibition opening. "There are small and large supported studios that have really big group settings for artists to connect," director Sim Luttin says. "We're more one-on-one in the way we work with artists." What that one-on-one support looks like in practice is often small and practical. Take the artist statement, the short piece of writing that accompanies almost any show. Most artists write their own. Tamang, who finds writing hard, wrote hers with Luttin. The statement for Tamang's solo show came out of a series of conversations. Luttin would record Tamang talking, take notes, and the two would piece it together, until the words were Tamang's own. At her exhibition's recent opening night, Tamang was surprised by the size of the crowd. In a particularly touching tribute, two of her friends came dressed as giant pink poodles, a nod to the poodles that recur in her work. Her friend Dimity Shepherd sang. The lipstick entrepreneur Poppy King turned up. It's a following both Luttin and Tamang hope the show will help grow, as Tamang makes the leap to a professional career. For Tamang, though, it comes back to the work. "It's what keeps me going," she says. "I love bringing people happiness, and connecting."